Day 7

Church in Chevy Chase, Maryland.  We attended the DC 3rd ward, but yes, there is a Chevy Chase Ward.  I wish I'd taken a picture of their bulletin board with their name prominently displayed on there.  I think if Hugh Hefner ever had a city named for him, and we had a church unit there, the church would probably try to name it anything but the Hugh Hefner ward.  But Chevy Chase Ward is only medium-irreverent, I suppose.

We visited the DC Temple.  When I was a child, this was the only temple east of the Mississippi, so I saw it when my parents were ordinance workers there.  I was impressed by the decorative discs adorning the gates, and I had it in my head a long time that these were the gold plates.  

We also visited the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, and Vietnam Memorial at night.  Pretty cool, but not as cool as the DC Temple.

Vacation2010Videos! 009.MTS

The worst food ever can be found at the Atrium Cafe at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History. Unfortunately, it is coupled with being the most expensive food in D.C.

Day the Fifth

Tours of the Capitol and the Kennedy Center today.  Both excellent.  But the highlight of the day came when the children discovered subway venting fans, which make them all buff. (They don't stink as much here as they do in New York).

On Hotels and Bad Drivers

Hotels can be expensive.  They can be cheap.  They can even be free.  We've had a mixture of the two on this trip.

With a family our size, cheap hotels might not be worth it.  We used miles that Aaron and I had earned with Delta to get our hotels on the way to and from D.C.  My objective was to spend very little on the hotels on the way to and from D.C. and Virginia, so that we could enjoy ourselves while in D.C. and Virginia.  So, I made the miles stretch a bit.  Our first stop was the LaQuinta in Hoffman Estates, IL.  I drove the first leg of the trip.

When I checked in for our first night's stay, I found that they hadn't gotten us adjoining rooms, although our booking had specified that in the notes.  They claim not to have gotten the notes.  I will ask Delta about this, as our second hotel said the same thing.  But more about that later.  The LaQuinta didn't have two double rooms available for us that were adjoining.  They had two options for us.  One was a King room with an adjoining two doubles.  The other was two doubles, but not adjoining.  Aaron and I wanted to be able to supervise our children without splitting up for the night, so we chose the adjoining rooms, after they consented to putting a rollaway in each room.  This sounded like a pretty good deal.

When we arrived in the room, we discovered that their idea of a King bed is something much larger than the double beds, but slightly smaller than a Queen.  The double beds were quite small, as well.  The boys all volunteered to take a rollaway, rather than have to sleep with their siblings.  We gave Tristin and Brandon the rollaways, as they are the largest, and had Will and Ben share a bed.  We tried putting Dallin, Aidan and Katie sideways on the remaining bed, but Aidan and Katie were too wired for that to work.  Katie ended up sleeping with Aaron and me, and Aidan slept in a very small chair.  We aren't sure why he chose to sit upright in a chair to sleep, but that's where we found him in the morning.  Dallin ended up having a double bed to himself.  Aaron and I ended up getting very little sleep.

The nice thing about the LaQuinta was the heated outdoor pool.  We enjoyed it, but as it was only 79 degrees and windy, it was a little cool in the air when wet.  The pool was too deep for Aidan and Katie to stand up in it, so that meant whoever had them had to deal with a little bit of a chill.  Most of the time that person was me.

The breakfast was nice.  They had the standard free continental breakfast with a waffle maker, yogurt, fruit, muffins, cereal, toast, bagels, etc.  After loading up the van at 6:15am, we ate a quick breakfast and were on our way by 6:50am.

The approximately four to six frequently interrupted hours of sleep I got were perhaps slightly inadequate for driving in Chicago rush hour traffic.  It amazes me how people there weave and drive 15mph over the speed limit and somehow there are no accidents on the roads.  However, I made it through the white-knuckle portion of the trip, and had a relatively uneventful drive to Pittsburgh, PA.  Of course, once we reached Pittsburgh, I discovered I liked driving there even less than in Chicago.

Pittsburgh is a winding mess of hilly roads.  They have all been recently renamed, so even though I just updated the TomTom, we had to rely on where we figured the picture on the TomTom was taking us, rather than the road names.  Plus, if you aren't driving 15-20mph over the speed limit at all times, drivers get mad at you - even if you aren't in the left lane!  It is utterly ridiculous.

We made it to the hotel at about 5:30pm, just in time to settle in a little before leaving for the Pirates game.  That was a long day of driving.  I let Aaron drive for the evening.  I had suffered through enough during the long day.

As I mentioned before, we ran into problems again at check-in at the Ramada in Pittsburgh.  As the LaQuinta claimed to have not gotten our notes, I had Aaron call up the Ramada at 10am and confirm the adjoining room notes.  They said they did not have the notes in their system, but added them at that time.  That meant very little, because when we checked in, we were told they had no adjoining rooms available.

The beds were tiny double beds, just like the ones at the LaQuinta.  Unfortunately, we didn't have rollaways this time.  We juggled around who was to be in each room for a while.  I thought that having older boys share beds with younger boys would make a more comfortable night, but in the end we had the older four in one room, and the others with us.  Tristin and Brandon got their own beds, William slept on a cushioned bench, and Ben chose to sleep on the floor.  In our room, Aidan started out on the bench, but moved to the floor.  Dallin and Katie shared one bed, and Aaron and I slept in the other.  Katie really put up a fuss about not sleeping with us, but as this bed barely fit the two of us, we held firm.

We slept in at the Ramada, if you count the time change. Tristin didn't really appreciate my wake-up call at 7:30am ET.  We even had to wake up Aidan and Katie, who normally pop up after we make the slightest noise. I only had about 5 hours to drive to get to D.C., so we weren't in too much of a rush, but we were hoping to arrive at the Hyatt Regency at 3pm.  We ate at the paltry continental breakfast, and headed out at about 9am.  We made plenty of stops on our way.  I have to say, I was extremely glad to get out of Pennsylvania and arrive in Maryland.  The roads were better, and the drivers were more considerate. We almost ran out of cash for tolls at the last toll booth. We tried getting cash at an ATM along the way, but it was out of order.  We had no idea how much they were going to end up charging us, but we managed to scrape by with a couple of dollars remaining.  We had no idea how much tolls would be going into this trip.  It was around $30-$40.

We were extremely ready to get into our nice hotel when we arrived at 3:30pm.  Unfortunately, our nice hotel wasn't ready for us.  I made the reservation on the phone and had a confirmation that said we would be arriving at around 3pm, but our rooms were not clean yet.  So, we piled our stuff onto a bellman's cart, and piled back into the van.  We figured we could park the van at Union Station and take a nice walk back while we waited for our phone call saying our rooms were ready.  We didn't anticipate the heavens to open up and pour rain for the next hour.  We got the call within 20 minutes, but after waiting for the rain to let up enough to walk the 5 blocks back to the hotel without getting too wet, we didn't arrive back at the hotel until about 4:30pm.

All in all, it was worth the wait.  Paying for a nice hotel makes a difference.  We have an executive suite with a second adjoining bedroom.  I found a great family package where we got the second room for half price, so we made the splurge for the king suite.  It has a separate bedroom for us, a living room with a pull-out bed, and an adjoining room with two double beds.  Yes, it appears that a double bed is tiny no matter where you go.  But, there are so many large comfy chairs that we pushed two sets together and got two extra beds for Aidan and Dallin.  Katie slept on the couch cushions on the floor.  Tristin and Brandon got their own beds, and William and Ben slept on the pull-out couch.  It was quite comfortable, and we got a good 8.5 hours of sleep.  I had a great night.

Breakfast here was fabulous.  They have a real buffet, with a made-to-order omelette bar.  It was wonderful. Aaron showed you the picture of us in our own dining room.  The breakfast came as part of the room package.  I guess it wasn't supposed to for more than 4 of our children (plus Katie for free for being under 3), but I remember asking the guy when I made the reservation, and he said it was free for all of us, so the lady at check-in wrote out some extra vouchers for us.  We appreciated this immensely.

We look forward to our next four days here.  We won't even mind moving on to VA, though, as we will be at  Comfort Suites.  They happen to have two double beds in one room, one King bed in one room, plus a sofa bed in each room.  As long as they don't miss the adjoining room request, we should be good.

Day 4:Air & Space, and the Pentagon

One of my favorite memories of a DC trip as a child was visiting the Aaron Space Museum. It was nice of them to name it after me.  (My parents also used to 'run Aarons' fairly often, which meant every thing from grocery shopping to post office trips, until my sister insisted they start 'running Nancys' instead.)  So of course I first had to bring the children to my namesake.  I'm thinking about renaming it the 'William Aaron Space Museum', in order to appropriately pass on the legacy.

We also toured the Pentagon today.  Click here for photos. (Try all day to click if you want, but there's no link.  Its a security thing. Also, they don't allow you to take pictures). My favorite part was the courtyard; there's a little building right in the middle of it, and during the Cold War the Soviets saw so many people coming and going from it in their satellite photos, that they assumed it held nuclear weapons and so they trained most of their own Nuclear Weapons on it.  It was, as it turns out, the most dangerous hot dog stand in the world.

Yesterday we finished our drive to DC and did nothing.  Most pleasant.

Here we are at breakfast this morning. The Hyatt folks were kind enough to give us our own dining room, and the children were kind enough to not dismantle it.

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Day 2: PNC Park

I've told people we drove all the way to Pittsburgh to see a game because it has to be a really bad team in order for my family to afford tickets... of course, the fact that PNC stadium is a really cool outdoor stadium, downtown on the river, with a lot of history, adds to it.  I had a good time.  And the kids got their fill of junk food (pop, peanuts, cracker jack, cotton candy, hot dogs, and pop corn). That kept them busy, and I didn't bother distracting them by pointing out the game because, well, there really wasn't one.  The Pirates showed their true colors, losing 0-6 against the Marlins in an unremarkable show down.  The only people who showed up ready to fight were two girls down front who had a hair-pulling contest and got ejected by security.  

 

I should also mention our excellent dinner in Chicago last night: The family was introduced to Gino's East, one of my favorite pizza places in the whole world. (The other two are Sven & Ole's in Grand Marais, MN, and Beau Jo's in Idaho Springs, Colorado.  Try all three before you die.)

 

It was a hit.

 

 

 

 

We're on our way

Summer vacation -

a rest without real resting - 

begins in green grass.

Stefany has kindly given permission to Aaron to use her blog to journal our trip to our Nation's Capitol.  Here the boys are forming the traditional Pratt Pyramid, crowned by Katherine. This is taken at a rest stop in Wisconsin.  Why? Because no family vacation is officially begun until the words "I have to go to the bathroom" have been uttered.

The first part of the morning in the car was spent working on Music Merit Badge - which is where Dad gets to make the boys listen to 'his' music and his explanations of their meaning.  We started with Classical Opera, a little bit of Italian and German, It included learning some of the words of "La Donna e Mobile", from Verdi's Rigoletto, and "Der Holle Racht" from Mozart's Marriage of Figaro.  I'm sure everyone enjoyed it as much as Dad did.

We're in the Paper

Read the article about the melodrama we're in, featuring our family, in the Waconia Patriot.

New Callings

In case you haven't heard, Aaron was sustained as 2nd counselor in the bishopric today.  We will never get to sit together in church now, but we should see him a lot more on Sundays, as he won't be traveling around the west metro all day anymore.  I guess that is an okay compromise.

In other news, I was sustained as the Relief Society chorister last week.  The bishop assures me that he's not putting me out to pasture, but that he will probably be adding to that sometime soon.  I am glad to be serving in the Relief Society.  I have been getting so much out of attending meetings since being released from Primary.  There are so many wonderful women in there to learn from.  I really do feel that I need this right now.

The funny thing about both of the callings is that we guessed them before they were extended.  I told Aaron the night before I was called that I was sure that was it, and with Tim Lanier's travel load increasing, Aaron figured that he was probably headed to replace him.  He is a little disappointed that he won't get to complete his missionary goals on the high council, but I think he'll be glad to be back in the ward.

Aaron and I had what we call "Elijah" parties tonight and last Sunday night.  Currently, our stake president has issued a goal for every youth and adult in the stake to find a relative whose temple work isn't complete, submit their name, and do their temple ordinances by next conference.  Aaron noticed through his assignment on the high council that people who are of pioneer stock typically don't think there is any work for them to do.  As he is of pioneer stock, and I found names for him to do, he knows this isn't the case.  There are also some people who just need a little help with learning the web application in order to do it.  So, we have been inviting families over to work on their family history, getting them registered on http://new.familysearch.org, and helping them find ancestors to do the work for.

Sometimes it is as easy as looking back a few generations until we come to someone whose temple work isn't done, but more often than not it entails coming back down a couple of generations from the direct line ancestors and looking up some information on family members whose information is sparse via http://ancestry.com.  We have found at least one ancestor for each person who has come whose work could be completed.

Well, Brandon and Tristin will be getting up at 2am to get ready to leave for scout camp.  I should go to sleep now so I am not a complete grouch tomorrow after having an interrupted night.